Daniel A. Begun
Daniel A. Begun
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
Taiwan-based electronics manufacturer, Grandtec, claims that it is now shipping "the world's first USB to HDMI converter"--the Grand HD Cinema. Grandtec claims that the Grand HD Cinema can use your Windows XP or Vista system's USB 2.0 ports to send 720p HD video to an HDMI-equipped display, such as widescreen HD LCD or plasma TV. The Grand...
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Never one to sit idly by on the sidelines and let things play out on their own, Google has always tried to play an active role in shaping how Internet technology is used and regulated. Net neutrality is one of the concerns that Google has been very vocal about, and now Google is putting tools into the hands of researchers and everyday users...
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Tradition says that there are two primary kinds of typists: touch-typists who are familiar enough with a keyboard's layout to type without having to look at the keyboard while they type, and hunt-and-peck typists who must visually locate each key they want to hit. The vast majority of English-language keyboard users--be them touch-typists...
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If cloud computing truly is the future, then this means that we'll likely be accessing our data from many different computers and devices--a number of which might belong to other parties. If you are like us, we get a little nervous when accessing our data on someone else's PC--it sort of feels like handing our wallet over to a stranger for...
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If you've noticed more spam in your inbox recently, it's not necessarily because you are now getting more spam that you used to. In fact, spam levels are still lower now than where they were this time last year. No, the increase is just spam slowly working its way back to its "normal" levels after it significantly dropped off last November....
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Security software company, AVG Technologies, reports that as many as 300,000 new, unique Websites launch every day, whose sole purpose is to infect visiting computers with malware. Not only has this number jumped up from as many as 200,000 only three months earlier, but many of these sites stay active for only a short period of time--sometimes...
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Congressman, Peter King (R), of New York State's Third Congressional District, introduced a bill to congress earlier this month that some might call the "Anti-Upskirt Bill." The actual name of the bill is the "Camera Phone Predator Alert Act" (HR 414), and its aim is to make it into law that all camera phones must "make a sound when a photograph...
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Perhaps one of the oldest forms of entertainment is that of witnessing other people's problems. The Greek playwright, Aeschylus, may have given us the tragedy as a parable, but radio and TV have given us first-hand insights into people's real-life, self-destructive behavior from the likes of the Lovline call-in radio show to the Dr. Phil TV...
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One of the reasons why cell phones are increasingly replacing landlines as the only phone service in some households is because cell phones can typically do much more than landline-based telephone units can. Cell phones have essentially become miniature computers with sophisticated audio-visual capabilities; whereas most landline phones do...
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If you are looking to get rid of an old computer, TV, or consumer electronics device, all Best Buy stores, nationwide, will help you recycle it. Starting on the day after Valentine's Day--Sunday, February 15--all 1,006 of the Best Buy stores in the U.S. (Puerto Rico will be added in 2010), will be participating in Best Buy's new electronics...
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Mac-based security software company, Intego, is warning that a Trojan horse targeting Macs is actively out in the wild and that at least 20,000 users have already downloaded (although not necessarily installed) infected software. The Trojan horse has the name OSX.Trojan.iServices.A and it is piggybacking on pirated copies of Apple's new iWork...
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Although there is no mention that the product even exists on Corsair's own Website, U.K.-based online retailer, Scan, purports to now be selling a 128GB solid-state drive (SSD) from Corsair. As a matter of fact, Corsair's site makes no mention that the company has even entered into the SSD market; albeit, such a move is a logical choice for...
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Solid State Drives (SSDs) are very quickly becoming a very popular alternative to traditional, platter-based hard drives. Not only can SSDs read and write data quicker overall, but since they have no moving parts, they can withstand a lot more abuse than traditional hard drives. SSDs are still relatively expensive and available storage capacity...
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The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that at the beginning of 2007, mobile phone expenditures exceeded that of expenditures for residential landline phone services. This marks the first time ever in the U.S. that consumers had spent more for mobile phone services than for traditional landline phone services. The Bureau of Labor Statistics...
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Pandora's free Internet streaming radio service just got a little less free. Well, it still doesn't cost you anything, but it is no longer commercial free. Pandora made the following announcements on its Twitter feed today: "Yes, for those asking, we have implemented a few audio ads. Not to worry, they won't be frequent or long. We gotta pay...
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There's an old saying in the insurance business: If you have enough money, you can purchase insurance for just about anything--that's something that Lloyd's of London has been doing for years. YouPlayOrWePay.com is no Lloyd's, but it is now offering insurance for something that until now seemed to be uninsurable: your World of Warcraft (WoW)...
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Searching via Google can be as much art as it is science. Yes, you can simply input what you are searching for and hope that some relevant results pop up somewhere in the first few ranked results. But when your search topic is somewhat obscure, complicated, or even too broad, you often have to tailor your search by carefully selecting which...
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There will no shortage of ways in which you'll be able to view tomorrow's Presidential Inauguration Events, either via TV or online. But regardless of the plethora of options available, that hasn't stopped the Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC) from also promising to host "live and on-demand video streaming of the official inauguration...
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It was only last year that many of the major U.S. mobile phone service providers eventually settled on a rate of $99.99 per month for unlimited, nationwide voice calls. This has been a boon for heavy users of mobile phones as it has brought down the cost of their monthly phone bills. But folks who also use their phones for data access usually...
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Because of the computational power of today's GPUs, GPUs are starting to be harnessed more and more to help out CPUs with some hardcore number crunching. That is the concept behind Nvidia's CUDA, ATI's Stream, and Apple's OpenCL frameworks. There aren't many apps available yet that take advantage of these relatively new technologies, but the...
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Google might be the most popular search engine, but it is by no means the only search engine people use. In fact, when people are truly digging for information it is not unheard of for them to use more than one search engine to find what they are looking for. So why not use multiple search engines at the same time? That's what the folks over...
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The Quake franchise has been one of the most popular game series of all time, with versions available for Windows PCs, Macs, Xbox 360, Nintendo 64, PlayStation 3, and even mobile phones, among other platforms. Back in 2007, id Software announced that it was working on a free, browser-based version of Quake, which id initially called Quake...
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